White Love and Other Events in Filipino History (American Encounters/Global Interactions)

White Love and Other Events in Filipino History (American Encounters/Global Interactions)

In this wide-ranging cultural and political history of Filipinos and the Philippines, Vicente L. Rafael examines the period from the onset of U.S. colonialism in 1898 to the emergence of a Filipino diaspora in the 1990s. Self-consciously adopting the essay form as a method with which to disrupt epic conceptions of Filipino history, Rafael treats in a condensed and concise manner clusters of historical detail and reflections that do not easily fit into a larger whole. White Love and Other Events in Filipino History is thus a view of nationalism as an unstable production, as Rafael reveals how, under what circumstances, and with what effects the concept of the nation has been produced and deployed in the Philippines. With a focus on the contradictions and ironies that suffuse Filipino history, Rafael delineates the multiple ways that colonialism has both inhabited and enabled the nationalist discourse of the present. His topics range from the colonial census of 1903-1905, in which a racialized imperial order imposed by the United States came into contact with an emergent revolutionary nationalism, to the pleasures and anxieties of nationalist identification as evinced in the rise of the Marcos regime. Other essays examine aspects of colonial domesticity through the writings of white women during the first decade of U.S. rule; the uses of photography in ethnology, war, and portraiture; the circulation of rumor during the Japanese occupation of Manila; the reproduction of a hierarchy of languages in popular culture; and the spectral presence of diasporic Filipino communities within the nation-state. A critique of both U.S. imperialism and Filipino nationalism, White Love and Other Events in Filipino History creates a sense of epistemological vertigo in the face of former attempts to comprehend and master Filipino identity. This volume should become a valuable work for those interested in Southeast Asian studies, Asian-American studies, postcolonial studies, and cultural studies. “An extremely rich, original, and insightful work. Famously gifted in style and nuance, Rafael ranks among the few contemporary scholars in Asian studies whose writings merit—and reward—careful rereading. This book not only illuminates twentieth-century Philippine history with great sophistication and subtlety but also treats colonialism, nationalism, and constructions of gender and race in ways that many non-Philippine specialists are certain to find interesting and fruitful.”—John T. Sidel, author of Capital, Coercion, and Crime: Bossism in the Philippines “These critical essays on colonial and contemporary Philippines offer a formidable combination of powerful cultural critique and incisive political commentary. Rafael’s deep knowledge of the Philippines, his capacity to address a large range of issues, his astute use of cultural and political theory and his many brilliant insights and analyses will provide new directions to postcolonial debates on imperialism, nationalism and their relationship to ‘area studies.’ A truly remarkable book.”—Dipesh Chakrabarty, University of Chicago “Written as a sustained and devoted interruption of postcolonial certainties while seeming to arrive from the future, White Love and Other Events in Filipino History ushers in its own eventfulness. It is a momentous work.”—John Pemberton, author of On the Subject of “Java” "An extremely rich, original, and insightful work. Famously gifted in style and nuance, Rafael ranks among the few contemporary scholars in Asian studies whose writings merit--and reward--careful rereading. This book not only illuminates twentieth-century Philippine history with great sophistication and subtlety but also treats colonialism, nationalism, and constructions of gender and race in ways that many non-Philippine specialists are certain to find interesting and fruitful."--John T. Sidel, author of "Capital, Coercion, and Crime: Bossism in the Philippines" Vicente L. Rafael is Professor of History at the University of Washington. He is the author of The Promise of the Foreign: Nationalism and the Technics of Translation in the Spanish Philippines and Contracting Colonialism: Translation and Christian Conversion in Tagalog Society under Early Spanish Rule , both also published by Duke University Press. White Love and Other Events in Filipino History By Vicente L. Rafael Duke University Press Copyright © 2000 Duke University Press All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-0-8223-2542-0 Contents List of Illustrations, Acknowledgments, Introduction Episodic Histories, 1. White Love Census and Melodrama in the U.S. Colonization of the Philippines, 2. Colonial Domesticity Engendering Race at the Edge of Empire, 1899–1912, 3. The Undead Notes on Photography in the Philippines, 1898–1920s, 4. Anticipating Nationhood Identification, Collaboration, and Rumor in Filipino Responses to Japan, 5. Patronage, Pornography, and Youth Ideology and Spectatorship during the Ea